tag.”
Martin nodded.
Rachel felt numb. They didn’t have that kind of money.
“Once again, I remind you what this is all about: Your son’s future is in the balance. If you go through with this, Dylan will grow up with a brilliant mind that will profoundly enhance his life, his success as a thinker, his health, his happiness, and his function as a human being. It may also affect his children and his children’s children because, for no other reason, he will value the life of the mind. He will not be the boy you are now raising. If you are not comfortable with that, forget it. If you don’t like the financial conditions, forget it. If you’re not at ease with the sociological, philosophical, bioethical matters or whatever, don’t do it. If you are not comfortable with me, if you fear that I might take your money and run, then don’t do it!
“However, you will have to trust that I won’t take your money and run. As a matter of fact, I like where I am. But if you are nagged by doubts, just say no.” Malenko stood up. They were being dismissed. “Go home and think it over.”
Suddenly everything took on a whole different perspective to Rachel. What started out as some variation of the Hippocratic code had turned into a simple business deal, and little else. The red Porsche, the elegant walnut- burl desk, the sailboat, the summer home on the Maine coast. The man was living the good life but not from tutoring children.
Malenko checked his watch. “Any questions?”
“No,” Martin said.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “If we were to agree to this, what about follow-up treatments for him? Monitoring his progress. What if something goes wrong?”
“You come to me,” he declared. “This is my procedure, and I am the only one who can help him and the only one who is able to monitor his progress.”
Malenko came around his desk. “Let me assure you that I am not going to abandon you like some old-time back-alley abortionist who plies his trade then drops off the planet. We are in this together for your son’s betterment. Enhancement does not end with the operation. Dylan will come in for regularly scheduled examinations like any other patient. Because of the special nature of the procedure, there are very special postoperative treatments to be certain all is going well.”
“And if it’s not?”
“I have done enough of these to be ready for any contingencies.” He extended his hand. “Believe me.”
Rachel took it, thinking that she wanted to believe him with all her heart.
“I understand your concerns, and you probably will think of many more questions. So call me early next week, and we can talk more about this.”
“I’ll be out of town next week,” Rachel said. “My mother is going to the hospital.”
“Well, when you get back. The sooner, the better. There are considerable preparations to be made. I’m also leaving the country in three weeks.”
“Where exactly do you perform the procedure?”
“At an offsite facility.”
He wasn’t going to specify.
“A regular medical facility, fully equipped and staffed?”
“Yes, of course. In fact,” he said, opening one of his desk drawers, “here’s what it looks like.”
He handed her three color blowups of an operating room. It looked like the standard ORs she had seen— operating tables, lights, electronic equipment, and what appeared to be brain-scan monitors. “These are for stereotaxic viewing of the procedure.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning we can view the interior structure of his brain in three-dimension on monitors while we are performing the operation. The real-time coordinate imaging guides us with the probes. It’s standard operating procedure in neurosurgery in the best of institutions including Mass General.”
Rachel nodded. She didn’t know anything about the equipment, but the photographs were impressive. In one, Malenko wore scrubs. No other people were in any of them, of course. She handed them back. “What about the rest of the staff?”
“For obvious reasons, I cannot tell you who they are,” he said. “But working with me will be the best there is, I assure you.”
“Practicing neurosurgeons?”
“Practicing neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub nurses, circulation nurses—the full complement.”
Rachel nodded, questions jamming her mind. “The other day you mentioned the cocktail of ingredients that you’d be using,” Rachel began, unable to actually say the words
“Yes. I won’t bore you with details, but the whole field of implantation is very intricate and complicated. But we use a mixture of certain chemical stimulants, protein growth factors, and dissociated tissue cells which will on their own genetic program create new axonal structures where deficient.”
Rachel nodded with guarded satisfaction. “We will be able to visit him, of course?”
“After the procedure is completed.” He opened the door. “Call me when you get back. Should you decide this is for you, then we’ll answer the rest of your questions.”
“Say we did this,” Martin said. “Just how long would it be before we see results?”
“In about three to six months you will begin to see improvement in his cognitive behavior. Because the process is progressive, it should continue for another six to nine months until it plateaus.”
“Which means in about a year and a half he will …” Martin trailed off.
“He will have an IQ of one hundred forty or more,” Malenko said.
“Oh, wow,” Martin said. His eyes filled up.
It was nearly noon, and Malenko led them out.
As they stepped into the hall, Rachel happened to notice another folder on the reception desk, apparently that of another patient. Rachel couldn’t help but glance at the name printed in black Magic Marker on the outside. BERNARDI.
Even as they walked back to their car behind the Porsche, Rachel did not connect the name. Her mind was too scattered with thoughts about Dylan, enhancement, and her mother to notice. And now there was a damn time constraint to consider. If they were going to put him through this, it had to be done soon.
That was absurd. How does one make a snap decision about subjecting one’s child to a secret brain operation to raise his intelligence and alter him and his life forever?
When the Whitmans left, Malenko went downstairs into the basement where he had set up a gym with weights, treadmill, StairMaster, and a speed bag.
He had never done competition boxing for obvious reasons, though he would have loved to. He knew as a young man he had had it in him to be a fine boxer—the strength, the timing, the aggression, and the deep-seated need to pound another’s face. But that wouldn’t be, so he worked out on the inflated black leather bladder, taking pleasure in the satisfyingly hypnotic rhythm and imagined enemies.
He changed into his sweats and pulled on the gloves while standing in front of a wall mirror. Maybe it was something the Whitman woman had said. Maybe it was what stared back at him in the mirror—that dead outsized pupil of his left eye. The heat of rage had grown cold over the years, but he could still hear those little bully bastards cawing in their stupid peasant dialect. In a flick, the bag was their faces, and he pounded it to a rhythmic blur while his mind slipped back.
It began, as usual, with taunts—this time, the bright pink and yellow stripes of his kite—
